Commenting on school textbook revision exercise, the former Vice-Chancellor of Bengaluru City University S. Japhet has said that “the wisdom of Kannada language acquired over many a thousand years is being washed away in no time in the name of textbook revision”. He also said that textbooks should be devoted to knowledge and facts.
“Writings of scholars such as P. Lankesh and L. Basavaraju and others have been torn down alleging that the textbooks framed by the previous governments have Left-wing tendencies embedded in them. The committee, which is embroiled in the illusion of India being a ‘global guru’ and trying to make society believe that ‘the past is great,’ is trying hard to portray discrimination in Indian society as a natural phenomenon. The plan to explicitly alienate Dalit and other scholars such as Buddha, Basava, Gandhi, Narayana Guru, Ambedkar, and Savitribai Phule by introducing children to the psychology of pseudo-patriotism is clearly behind the revision,” he said.
“The curriculum and the lessons should be based on the age group of students. Education experts believe that children at the primary level should be taught about life values and subject information should be provided at the secondary level. But the revision committee was trying to feed the children with the emotional silliness of the imagined Hindu nation like the milk mixed with poison. By introducing Basavanna as the reformer of Hinduism, the anti-Vedic truth is obscured,” he added.
